IN THE WOODSHED
Charlie Griffiths says grab a fresh pick and make a clean sweep with these awesome arpeggios played with just a single pick motion.
Charlie Griffiths brings you five great licks as an introduction to the art of sweep picking.
VIDEO LESSON
Sweep picking is a technique for moving from any string to a consecutive string in one fluid motion. You can sweep pick across two strings, or six strings and everything in between, in either an ascending or a descending motion. Sweep picking is typically used in jazz, metal and fusion to create fast, flowing arpeggio lines.
Example 1 is a warm-up exercise designed to get both hands working in synchronisation across three strings. The approach here is to pick three ascending notes, then three descending notes. It’s important to note that your picking hand should move smoothly as one continuous downstroke and one continuous upstroke, not as six separate pick movements. Another way of thinking about it is to employ the ‘rest stroke’. If you start with a down stroke, the pick should naturally fall into the next adjacent string, then repeat this to continue to the next string and so on.
Example 2 shows a variation on the three-string arpeggio, employed by metal legends like Yngwie Malmsteen and Tony
MacAlpine in the 80s. With this arrangement of notes, the three-string downward sweep is the same as seen in Ex1, but the descending pattern employs a pull-off.
Our 3rd example is a jazzy lick inspired by players like George Benson or Barney Kessel with sweeps interspersed with phrasing moving across all six strings.
For example 4 we enter the world of five-string Minor triad arpeggios as played by Jason Becker or Marty Friedman. Using the inversions of a triad is a great way to traverse the entire neck with a melodic idea and works especially well with sweep picking.
For the final lick we look to the sultan of sweeping, the great Frank Gambale. Frank uses a lot of unusual six-string shapes based around suspended sounds and extensions, which are challenging to play but the potential sounds available make the effort worthwhile.
The key to playing all of these ideas cleanly lies in the fretting hand, not the picking hand. The desired result is that only one note at a time is played, therefore only one note at a time should be fretted. This is achieved not only by deft finger placement, synchronised with the pick attack, but also effective string muting. For any single string you play you should also be muting the remaining five. This is best done with any bit of spare flesh available, as well as palm muting. When playing slowly, focus on clean and even playing, so these good habits are retained at higher speeds.
NEXT MONTH Charlie looks at the interesting and polyphonic technque of chord tapping
IF YOU START WITH A DOWN STROKE, THE PICK SHOULD FALL NATURALLY INTO THE NEXT ADJACENT STRING, THEN CONTINUE ON TO THE NEXT STRING